Mall Shooting Incident Studied

BARTOW | It was an otherwise normal Tuesday afternoon in June at the Lakeland Square mall.

People were patting puppies at Petland. Families were feasting at the Piccadilly restaurant.

But in a corridor, three young men exchanged some heated words with 18-year-old Ariel Scott. Gang signs were thrown. Bullets began to fly. Shoppers ran for cover.

Documents released to The Ledger on Thursday provide a detailed glimpse into the mall shooting, including the possibility that the shots might have been in self defense.

Prosecutors decided July 28 not to charge Scott with attempted second-degree murder nor with discharging a firearm in public.

He does face a third-degree felony of carrying a concealed firearm, court records show.

Chip Thullbery, a spokesman with the State Attorney's Office in Bartow, said Scott would not face the other two charges because a theory of self defense could not be disproved.

Investigators interviewed about 37 witnesses to the June 17 shooting, whose stray bullets broke tiles and left shattered glass in front of a dining booth where someone was eating inside Piccadilly.

Andre Maurice Warner, 18, was shot in the chest and was taken to Lakeland Regional Medical Center.

An officer noted that Warner, while bleeding on the floor of the mall, said he would "rather not say" why he was shot, reports state.

Warner told the officer at the hospital that the shooting was gang-related, but would not cooperate with identifying the shooter because it was against his beliefs to "snitch."

Three people who told detectives that they were with Scott at the time of the shooting said Scott shot a man armed with a knife.

A knife was found in a trash can near where the shooting took place, reports state.

"Since none of the defendant's group could describe the knife, it is unknown if the one found in the garbage can could have been in the victim's possession," reports state.

No latent fingerprints were collected from the knife nor from a .25-caliber semiautomatic handgun recovered from the residence where Scott was arrested, reports state.

Police have said the shooting took place after the random encounter between members of rival gangs who spotted each other wearing gang colors.

Sarkley Velez, whose 18-year-old sister, Samantha Serrano, was dating Scott, told detectives that she was present when the shooting took place.

She told detectives that Scott, Serrano and she went to the mall to pick up a friend, Daniel Cartagena, 16.

Serrano said Scott spoke to her about being in a gang, and was wearing a blue jersey that day.

Blue clothing can be a marker of the Crips gang, and red clothing can be a marker of the Bloods gang.

While walking in the mall, three men wearing red clothing confronted Scott and wanted to take the fight outside, according to reports.

Velez, Serrano and Cartagena told detectives that a man trying to fight Scott pulled out a knife. They said he pretended to give the knife to another member of his group, but continued to conceal it.

Velez said in a statement to detectives that the man with the knife got closer, and Scott "didn't know what to do anymore and he got nervous and so he just started shooting."

[ Jason Geary can be reached at jason.geary@theledger.com or 863-802-7536. ]